From the travel diary of Jeffrey Fereday, 1991
Published posthumously, 1996
ISBN 978-0-646-28641-9
67 pages, 21x15cm, pbk
RRP: AU $35 + AU $12 p&p
order by email: susan.fereday@gmail.com
Excerpt
Full days of filling out a voice in this place, obstinate and undeclared, and there is a yet desire for expression that knows it will remain silent, its throat closed, its closed throat that obstructs the flow between head and heart. I don’t know if it was really my idea to turn back or go no further, or whether circumstance simply wrung the end of my momentum.
I’m tired. The connections to the world which allow me to operate are unplugged, and remain all of a dangle there on the other side of the world. Here I'm without power, left to my own insubstantial devices. It is sobering to glimpse oneself as such, as ineffectual, and as beyond influence.
Having made up my mind to return, I suppose I’ve become a spectator to my absorption in the old ways of the already-said, yet any thought beyond this, even backwards, becomes progress in advance of my now certain return, upon whose understanding I take a quiet walk on the contemplative path, walking the onset of European autumn in DM soles on ancient cobblestones, keeping my pace beside solemn canals. I buy a sturdy notebook, feint-hearted, tightly-lined, and hardcovered. Good thick book, satisfying. Nice smell. Pleasant feel.
In the quiet of the busy city I confront the ways I inhabit language and otherwise make sense.
